


Projection

by Jaybee65



Category: La Femme Nikita
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death Fix, F/M, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 08:06:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7259338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaybee65/pseuds/Jaybee65
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Madeline finds herself outside Section One for good. Most operatives would think she was one of the lucky ones, doing her duty and then gaining her freedom. But did it count as lucky if she hadn’t wanted out?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Projection

**Author's Note:**

> Set post S4/S5, so potentially spoilers for everything. No ratings needed.
> 
> I have not written anything in this fandom in many(!) years, but I found fragments of ideas on my computer recently and decided to finish this off as a kind of final farewell to LFN. It’s post-canon AU resurrection fic, set after S4/S5. I suppose it could be characterized as Madeline/Charles (although in some ways it’s really just Madeline fic), with an appearance by Nikita and somewhat oblique references to Madeline/Operations.

_No. You understand. I'll make my own decision regarding my fate._

The words echoed against the barren walls and floor, and then in Madeline’s mind as her consciousness contracted--shrinking to a circle of glowing haze, then to a pulsating point, and then to nothing.

The nothingness could have lasted a few moments, days, years--or an eternity--all of them indistinguishable.

Eventually, however, the nothingness broke, and existence returned, reemerging through the darkness with sudden awareness. Heartbeat. Breath. Dry mouth. Leaden limbs. Aching pain, dull but omnipresent, in every single cell.

She opened her eyes. Elizabeth leaned over her and flicked a small flashlight back and forth, testing her reactions. Apparently satisfied, she set down the flashlight and slipped an arm behind Madeline’s back to help her sit up.

“Orange juice,” said Elizabeth, handing Madeline a cup. “You need the glucose.”

Madeline drank, and then she began to process her surroundings. They were in the rear of a van; by its gentle stops and sways, it seemed to be moving slowly through city streets. 

“Those are for you.” Elizabeth motioned toward a stack of folded clothing, shoes and a coat.

Madeline rose to her feet. Unsteady, she nearly fell until Elizabeth caught her arm. She discarded the hospital gown she was wrapped in and began to dress, noting the surgical gauze on her side and the soreness of the incision underneath.

“The trackers are all gone,” Elizabeth confirmed, nodding at the bandages.

Madeline was still too groggy to speak, so they rode in silence until finally the van stopped. The rear door rumbled and swung open. Henry stood outside; he offered a firm hand to help her step out. By this time, the dizziness had passed, and her footing was stable. 

They had parked in an alley in what looked like a distant suburb, next to a black BMW sedan with tinted windows. From the trash bins a few yards away, the scent of putrifying food scraps hung in the air; astringent, the odor quickly wiped away the remaining clouds in her head.

Elizabeth handed Madeline a gun, a purse stuffed with money and ammunition clips, and car keys. “I don't recommend driving for another few hours.”

Madeline nodded. Her brain was no longer fuzzy, but she still felt as if every muscle could only move in slow motion.

“It's been an honor, ma'am.”

“Likewise,” answered Madeline, halfway between a rasp and a whisper. She cleared her throat and her full voice returned. “Take care of yourselves.”

Elizabeth and Henry reentered the van and drove off. Back to Section? To a new life? Madeline had no idea.

It was daylight, but she’d forgotten to ask them what day it was. Or who, other than Madeline and the two of them, was still alive. The former, she could find out soon enough. The latter, she might never know. 

***

She drove several hours without stopping until she reached the small town where she had rented a storage locker years before. There, planning for a contingency she had once been so unshakably certain she would never allow to happen, she had stashed identification papers sufficient to start a new life. Having collected them, she ditched the car and caught a train back north again. Near the coast, in an old cathedral town, she found a nondescript holiday cottage to rent. Speaking badly-accented French and brandishing a tourist’s exaggerated smile, she agreed to pay far too much for the accommodations and hoped the proprietors would leave her alone. 

At night, the pain from her incision went from dull to throbbing. She propped herself up in a chair in a corner protected from the door’s line of sight, the gun resting on her lap. Exhausted, she fought sleep but nodded off anyway--until a dream of a gunshot firing at her temple woke her up, shaking. The nightmare cycle of dreaming and starting awake repeated over and over, ending only when the sky outside the window began to smudge gray, signaling the arrival of an overcast morning.

Almost twenty-four hours on the outside. She needed food. She needed painkillers. She also needed to assess her surroundings. She had to decide how long to stay and where to go next. All of the other decisions she thought she’d needed to make just a few days before had been rendered utterly irrelevant, as if her life trajectory had suddenly dropped her off the edge of an abyss.

Now, her tasks were simple, if not necessarily easy. Stay alive. Stay hidden. For as long as possible.

And then?

She wasn’t sure how to begin answering that question. She had never made plans for the long term before. She’d never thought she had one.

***

After three months of roving the Low Countries, she was running short of money. She had access to a few offshore accounts, but she was wary of risking any traceable transactions too soon. Instead, she downgraded her accommodations, the only significant expense she had. She had little else to buy. She ate minimally and purchased just enough clothing and personal items to carry in a bag that she practiced packing in twenty seconds. She had long since left the gun behind, reluctantly, deciding that the complications of being caught with it anywhere endangered her more than it provided any real protection. 

When she wasn’t in transit from one unmemorable town to another, she kept to her rental room of the moment. An occasional newspaper and the television were her only sources of information about the world. They told her almost nothing, and she knew at least half of even that would be lies. Having access to unlimited data had become as second nature as having access to oxygen, but now the air was as thin as at the summit of Everest.

If she hadn’t put so much energy into constantly looking over her shoulder, the boredom might have crushed her.

The boredom, the isolation, the pointlessness of roaming from place to place with no end game other than survival, the bitterness of dwelling on what she had lost and the unfairness of the way it had been taken from her--it all finally prodded her into action. She made a decision, probably a bad one: she would go to Paris, even though she knew she really shouldn’t.

The next day, she caught the high-speed train from Antwerp, settled into the plush red seat, and pretended to read a magazine for two hours, ignoring the ruddy-faced blond businessman across the aisle who kept stealing hopeful glances her way. 

As the train passed through the outskirts of Paris and began to slow, her heart rate began to rise. People knew her there, and so even under the best of conditions--which this wasn’t--traveling to the city would be far riskier than accessing her bank accounts. Ideally, she would have liked to have had more time on the outside to ensure she at least wasn’t being tracked, but the calendar left her no choice. If she missed this chance to go to the rendezvous point, she'd have to wait another year to try again. That might have been the prudent thing to do, but the loneliness made her reckless. Three months without speaking to anyone other than in commercial transactions and superficial banalities was long enough.

She had never bothered to consider before just how much she actually needed some form of genuine human interaction. Quite a bit, as it turned out. It was a weakness that could be fatal, the type of thing she would have used in a profile to trap someone else. She might very well be on her way to spring just such a trap on herself. It wasn’t too late to change her mind. She could still turn around and be out of the country again in a matter of hours. She could go farther still and be on another continent in a day, never to look back.

She could do those things easily, but she didn’t. Instead, at 1:50 pm, she stood at the appointed intersection, browsing in a shop window and pretending to be fascinated by the display, waiting for the one person on the planet that might be safe for her to contact: the man she’d married nearly twelve years before, but hadn’t lived with in eleven.

She wasn’t sure whether Charles would come--or if he was even still alive. Two years before, she'd only had a few hurried moments with him before she had to pretend to shoot him. Nikita had left the room, waiting out of sight but still within earshot, so Madeline could only give him a quick embrace, leaning in to whisper a place, date and time.

“If I ever leave,” she said, “I'll meet you there. Look for me every year.”

She'd thought it was an empty promise, something to give him comfort over the years as he finally came to terms with the idea that they would never see each other again. Had he believed her, or had he given up hope right away? If he were smart, he would have done the latter. That’s what she’d have done in his place. But he’d always been absurdly foolish when it came to her, so she knew it might just be the former.

Five minutes later, in the reflection of the shop window, she saw him standing behind her, somber-looking in a black suit with pinstripes and a gray herringbone tie. She turned, and they stood face to face. His bright blue eyes searched hers, and then he reached out and touched her cheek tentatively, as if unsure if she were real or just wishful thinking.

“Are you out for good?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Are they looking for you?”

“I don't think so.” She smiled weakly. “As far as they’re concerned, I'm dead.”

He smiled back. “So we're two ghosts, then.”

“We _were_ ghosts. I’m not sure what we are now.”

He cocked his head, thoughtful. “Alive, I reckon. Strange feeling, that.” He offered his arm. “Shall we?”

She took his arm, and they walked away together down the street. She didn’t ask him where they were going. She didn’t care where they were going. The fact that she had someone to go with--wherever it might be--felt like grasping a lifejacket when stranded at sea.

Three blocks away, after they had entered his car and he was about to pull off, he turned to her in the passenger seat. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“No.” She closed her eyes and leaned back against the headrest, the months of relentless fatigue finally claiming her. “Not now. Maybe someday.”

“Bad, then?”

Without opening her eyes, she said, “Very.”

***

Charles lived--no, _they_ lived, now--in Southern Spain, where he had set himself up with a cover identity as a retired investment banker. There were enough expatriate English in the town that he didn’t stand out, but not so many that he was likely to run into anyone he had ever known--in his Section persona, his Red Cell persona, or any other.

The size of the house, a white, three-story villa at the top of a bramble-covered hill overlooking the edge of town, surprised her. “You’ve done quite well for yourself,” she commented, as the tires crunched along the winding drive to the wrought iron gate.

“Day trading keeps my mind occupied,” he replied, an apologetic tone creeping into his voice, suggesting that earning money was somehow dishonorably plebeian after their former noble calling. Then a smile lightened his face. “Now that you’re here, I’ll have something to spend my profits on.”

To the handful of townspeople he interacted with, he explained away her arrival as the return of his long-estranged wife after years of separation. “She’s finally given up her workaholic lifestyle, and we’re trying to make another go of it,” he confided to the shopkeeper at the store where they went to buy groceries.

Standing next to him at the counter, studying the different varieties of manzanilla behind the glass case, she smiled in appreciation at the irony. The perfect cover stories always were the true ones.

The shopkeeper nodded solemnly. “You’ve made the right choice, Señora. Overwork will kill you, you know.”

***

Charles refrained from asking about the circumstances of her exit, but that didn't stop her from thinking about it. Ruminating about it. Obsessing about it. She found her attention drifting back to it every time she stopped making an active effort to focus on something else. Sometimes it happened when she heard a particular type of story in the news, anything that jogged a memory or prompted her instinct for analysis. Other times it seemed to come upon her at random, when she was eating a meal, listening to music, or just sitting in a chair overlooking their garden. One moment she would be enjoying a sunset on the patio, and then the next she'd be back in that interview room, trapped behind the window, vanquished and humiliated as she watched Nikita and Jones remove her life from her control--until she finally asserted her own power and wrenched it right back from them.

Her life. Her fate. Her decision. She’d proven that in the end. So why did she still feel so impotent?

***

Days slipped into weeks and then into months. One morning as Charles measured out the coffee for their breakfast, the radio announced a car bomb in Copenhagen. Three dead, including the bomber. Claims of responsibility by--

Enough. She punched the button to turn it off.

“We could have stopped that,” she said, palms pressed down on the counter as if she could push reality away. “If I were still there, I would have….” Her voice caught, tangled and trailed off.

“And why _aren't_ you still there?” he asked, finally breaking their unspoken agreement to avoid the subject.

“Politics,” she answered, her inflection venomous.

“But you were always so good at politics,” he said, sounding puzzled.

“Actually,” she said, and the words seemed to emerge of their own accord, “I was terrible at politics. I only thought I was good.” The self-rebuke caught her by surprise; disoriented, she returned to the kitchen table and sat down. The tension in her muscles subsided as a curtain lifted between her and her surroundings. The room was filled with morning light and the sound of a goldfinch twittering outside the window. It was probably there every morning, but she'd never noticed it before.

Charles turned the switch on the coffee machine, and as it began bubbling, he joined her at the table. His face was expectant.

“Tell me one thing, and I won’t ask anything else.” He leaned forward and his gaze sharpened, both pleading and demanding at the same time. “Did you know what really happened to me?”

“When you disappeared?” At his nod, she answered, “No. I was informed you were killed.”

“So he never told you I sent messages.” It was a confirmation, not a question.

“He never told me a lot of things,” she said, and left it at that.

 _Did you take up with him again?_ , she could feel Charles adding silently. Did the grieving widow allow the triumphant rival to comfort her in her moment of loss? But he didn't say it, and even if he had, she wouldn't have given him an answer. There were parts of her she would allow him access to and parts that she would not.

Looking relieved, he got back up to pour himself a cup of coffee. As he stirred in sugar, he threw a glance back over his shoulder. “By the way,” he said lightly, voicing what was no doubt for him an idle afterthought, “Whatever happened to the woman I made contact with? Nikita, wasn't it?”

She burst out in a pained laugh. “My God, what a question.”

“What? I rather liked her. She had a spark.”

“A spark. I guess you could call it that.” The sunlight in the room faded away into the background, and the curtain descended again. “I underestimated Nikita. A mistake that nearly got me canceled. That's why I'm here today instead of still working.”

“Then I owe her thanks.” When her eyes rolled in scorn, he added, “You gave enough of your life to that organization. It was high time you left.”

“I wasn't ready.”

“I wasn't, either. But I got used to it. You'll see. One day you'll realize you're one of the lucky ones. You did your duty, and you got out.”

Most operatives would surely agree with him. But did it count as lucky if she hadn't wanted out?

***

Eventually, she began to work up interest in the environment beyond the house itself. The scenery was lovely, the town historic, and the climate perfect. She took a day to explore the nearby Roman ruins and another to visit the Moorish fortress that loomed on the hill above the clustered white houses of the town. There, she climbed to the top of a stone tower and leaned out, letting the dry wind blow her hair. She tried to picture what it would have been like to have been an officer in the caliph’s army, sworn to service with a waning empire, staring across that very same vista into steadily advancing catastrophe. 

It didn't take much imagination, as it turned out. She turned away from the window, descended the steps and resolved never to visit the fortress again.

That evening after dinner, she sat in an armchair to read the newspaper with a glass of anís, while Charles worked at a desk nearby, tapping his computer in preparation for the market opening in Wellington. On the third page of the paper, she came across an article on hearings into local police corruption. She barely got past the first paragraph--describing the prosecution of a lieutenant and a captain, but not the chief--before she set the newspaper down, rattling pages in disgust.

“The Carrasco affair,” she announced, answering Charles’ questioning look. “It’s a witch hunt.”

He shrugged. “Probably. Hard to tell without more context.”

“No,” she insisted, and the vehemence flushed her face hot. “These things always are. I went through one personally, so I should know.”

His eyes narrowed. “What happened?”

“Nikita, that operative you found so charming, was an agent for Center. For years, she spied on us and reported every trivial detail. When they collected enough to justify a purge, they launched a review. I was given the honor of being the very first target.”

“I see,” he said, with a knowing nod, “So that’s how you got out. I wondered when you would finally tell me.”

“Of course, the decision was a foregone conclusion,” she said, enunciating the words with distaste. “The whole point was to find an excuse to get rid of me.” 

The veins in her neck tightened. Sitting in the Spanish sun hadn’t melted away her outrage, after all--just lulled it into a drowsy somnolence from which she had now jolted awake. Nearly six months had gone by, but it might as well have been six hours. She still remembered every word of her review--every single insulting word--and they struck her like an open palm to the face. 

“Do you know what Nikita said?” she asked, seething but cold.

“Go ahead.”

“She said I was a bad influence on Paul. As if everything he did--everything he _was_ \--was _my_ fault.” She gave him a sharp glance. “Do you remember who used to say that very same thing?”

“Adrian, of course.”

“Two of a kind, Nikita and Adrian. Moralistic, judgmental….” Her voice trailed off. There weren't adjectives strong enough to express how much she loathed them both.

“And very mistaken,” Charles finished for her. “If there’s one thing I know for certain, it’s that Paul is very much his own person.”

“Very much indeed.” 

She couldn’t quite bring herself to admit just how much so, in fact. Voicing Paul’s name was a mistake. She’d been avoiding it, instinctively, limiting herself to an ambiguous _he_ or _him_ when she referred to him at all. Now that she finally said it aloud, a floodgate unlocked, and the tension of those last few weeks before the final calamity came rolling back, a returning tide, unstoppable, churning up unwelcome memories like sunken debris. Memories such as how much her life in Section had been falling apart disastrously toward the end, even without Nikita. How she had committed herself to the war between Paul and George, and just as Paul finally won, he seemed to have no more use for her. How she had wondered what her future was, or if she even had one. Now, these thoughts rose up again, all at once, uncontrollable.

With each memory that she tried to swallow, a lump of anger caught in her throat, choking and swelling into fury. The words spilled out, unbidden. “To sacrifice what I did, and then just be thrown away...if I could light a match and incinerate the place, I’d do it in an instant. To hell with all of them.”

If Charles was taken aback by the outburst of open emotion from her, he didn’t show it. He simply said, “You can do something even better than that.”

“Really?” She asked, lacing the question with caustic skepticism. “What?” 

“Enjoy your life and don’t look back. That’s the best revenge possible.”

That was the sensible answer, of course. And yet it rang ludicrously hollow, like the self-comforting rationalization of the defeated.

She shook her head. “I’m not sure that’s enough.”

******

It was already hot by mid-morning, so Madeline took cover under a straw hat as she sat on the patio. The light hit the bougainvilleas along the stone wall at an especially flattering angle, so, only half consciously, she picked up a discarded envelope from the stack of bills Charles was sorting through on the other side of the table and began sketching the flowers on the back.

When Charles finished one bill and reached for the next, he glanced over at what she was doing. “That’s quite good,” he remarked.

“For an amateur, I suppose.”

“Did you ever take lessons?”

“Only a few. Not enough time.”

“You have time now,” he said pointedly.

She set down the envelope and looked at him, cocking her head with a knowing smile. “Are you trying to find something for me to do?”

“You need it.” He didn’t smile back. “I have my investments to manage. It gives me purpose. Something to wake up for every day. It kept me going even without you. You have to find something like that.”

She chuckled to hide it, but she felt a sting of offense. “I thought I was supposed to be the expert on psychological adjustment.”

“What's the saying again? Physician, heal thyself.” His tone was teasing to match hers, but she could tell from the look in his eyes that he wasn't joking at all.

***

To humor Charles, she hired a private art tutor from town. When she told him about her decision, he insisted on converting several rooms on the top floor into a studio, hiring workers to knock down walls, install new light fixtures and cut open skylights.

“Rather elaborate for a hobby,” she said, lifting an eyebrow as she looked over the architectural design he'd had prepared for the contractor.

“It's not going to be a hobby,” he replied.

“You sound very certain.”

“Because I know you.”

The local tutor lasted a few months before she learned everything he could teach her. They brought in another from Madrid, who lasted several more.

“Are you religious?” the tutor asked one day, looking over her shoulder as she worked on shading.

“Not especially.”

“I’m surprised.”

“Why?”

“It’s the paintings you select to copy. You seem to be fond of spiritual themes. Good and evil, free will and fate, heaven and hell. Especially hell.”

She turned and fixed him with a glacial look that silenced him for the rest of the day. When they finished later that afternoon, she handed him payment and told him his services were no longer necessary. Afterwards, Charles was eager to send away for an expensive instructor from London he had somehow heard about, but she demurred. She’d learned what she wanted--the point now was to practice.

She continued copying the Masters, working on details in painstaking repetition until she got them right. Next, she began her own work, perfecting one set of techniques, trying others until they too were perfect, then painting over the canvas and starting over again to try even more. It took many additional months before she finished something she was actually satisfied enough with to keep. She hung it in the studio, a small splash of ruby against an immense white wall.

“It’s very striking,” commented Charles when he noticed it several days later. “But I’ve never really understood abstract art. What is it supposed to be?”

“Not necessarily anything,” she said. “It might simply be an exercise in form and color. Or it might be a cipher with concealed meaning.”

“And which one is this?”

She shrugged. “That's up to you. Whatever you read into it comes from yourself.”

***

The walls began filling up gradually, rectangular frames marking a steady path from north to east to south to west. When one circle completed, she began another higher up, and then another.

The tutor from Madrid hadn’t been wrong. Even the light colors she chose to work with took on an infernal tinge, and the symbolic references grew more elaborately subterranean. She began to research new ones to use, poring over texts on mythology, theology, and obscure heretical sects.

This time, she was working on a representation of the seven gates of Irkalla. For weeks, she studied the concept in books she’d had shipped from Rome. For several more, she planned her design, going through the motions of normal daily life with only half her mind anchored to the present, the other half lost measuring angles, adjusting perspective, and arranging elements. When every detail was precisely balanced, she spent three days--the last with no sleep whatsoever--painting the final version. 

It was about an hour after dawn when she finally finished. The growing sunlight set off the gold and crimson circles on the canvas with a deepening glow. She knew she should sleep, but a final burst of exultant energy drove her to the balcony. There, she gripped the metal railing and watched cars wind along the road in the distance, the existence of the real world seeping back into her awareness with each breath of cool morning air that filled her lungs. The concentration on her task had seized her mind completely; the sudden release of elation and exhaustion afterwards felt like dying and being reborn. 

She knew where she’d felt that way before--for a moment, the realization unsettled her, but then it only made her want it more. 

***

“Madeline,” Charles called out from the studio door. “Are you ready?”

Jarred out of her thoughts by his voice, Madeline closed her book and set it down on the desk she kept in the corner. She glanced at the clock, suddenly aware that she had been reading for hours. It was their anniversary, they had a dinner reservation at a restaurant in town, and she still needed to change clothes.

“Sorry, I was caught up reading,” she said with an apologetic smile as he approached.

“That’s perfectly fine. We don’t need to leave for another thirty minutes. I just came to remind you.” He nodded toward the book. “What is it that’s so engrossing?”

She held out the volume for his inspection. _Informe de Alonso de Salazar Frías al Inquisidor General_. 

“Report to the Inquisitor General?” He raised his eyebrows and chuckled. “Enjoying some lurid local history?”

She smiled and shook her head. “Not at all. Salazar made a remarkably modern analysis of the phenomenon of false confessions, without the benefit of any psychological theory to help him,” she explained. “It’s a classic in the field,” she added admiringly. “I used to keep a copy back--” She stopped herself.

“Back in Section,” he finished for her.

“Yes,” she said. Except that what she was going to say was _back home_.

He gave her a long, silent look, and if she didn’t know him better, she would have said it was one of disappointment. 

“Why are you reading it now?” he finally asked.

“I’m trying to find the name of a particular demon.” When his forehead wrinkled in confusion, she added, “I’m working the names into that.” She gestured across the room to her current work in progress, a spiral of jagged shapes in ochre and muddy brown, sitting halfway finished on its easel. “I convert the letters into numbers and use them to calculate the angles.”

“You're encoding the names of _demons_ into your paintings?”

“This one, yes. But I use different concepts in each.” She pointed to another, filled with overlapping gradients of turquoise, sapphire, cerulean, cobalt, and navy. “That one focuses on shades of color. The progression shows the levels of descent into the Blue Lotus hell realm of Tibetan Buddhist cosmology.”

He turned again toward her current work in progress. It was wholly abstract, but the beings whose names she had incorporated lurked there, writhing inside every brushstroke.

“I don’t see them, but I feel them,” he said, with an uncomfortable frown. “The darkness, the violence--it’s palpable.” He stared longer, and then he began to inspect the other paintings on the walls, circling the room and walking past each one.

“You’re painting Section, aren’t you?” he asked, his voice wavering between alarm and accusation. “You miss it so much, you’re rebuilding it around you. You’re recreating it in paintings because that’s the only way you can go back.”

“No, I’m not,” she stated truthfully, but she could see from the look on his face that he didn’t believe her.

He turned and left the room without another word. Twenty-five minutes later, she joined him for a pleasant candlelit dinner during which neither of them mentioned the prior conversation. They didn’t mention it the next day, the day after that, or the one that followed.

There was no way to explain the truth to him, so there was no point trying. When he looked at the paintings, he saw only what he wanted to see. His interpretation wasn’t necessarily wrong, on its own merits, but he had misinterpreted her intention completely. He saw Section, which was certainly dark enough--but missed the real source of the darkness. 

She wasn’t painting Section. She was painting herself.

***

From that day on, Charles avoided her studio as much as possible, but on the surface at least, nothing else changed between them. If anything, they became even more affectionate in their daily routine. However, she came to the conclusion that, as much as he loved her, he didn’t fully know her--and perhaps didn’t want to. He loved what he could comprehend and refused to consider the existence of anything beyond those intelligible boundaries. He wasn't a simple man, she knew, and he possessed quite a few layers of his own, but they all fell within the visible spectrum. Hers, in contrast, spanned all the way from ultraviolet to infrared.

Their life together was satisfying, regardless. She respected him, admired his loyalty and rectitude, and enjoyed his company. Which should have been enough. Which _was_ enough, most of the time. However, she also knew that no matter what he did, he would never be able to reach into her deeply enough to hurt her. Enrage her. Destroy her. 

There was someone who could do those things. Someone she tried as much as possible to forget. When she remembered--remembered him, remembered how he had warped space-time and dragged her into his orbit, remembered how he made her _want_ to give up herself and follow him into the inferno--the darkness, fury and resentment surged. She was angry because he’d made her feel those things. She was even angrier because, despite herself, even despite how things ended, she wanted to feel them again.

Her anger used to frighten her. Ever since that day in childhood she couldn’t recall distinctly but at the same time could never forget, whenever she had felt rage like that, she’d denied it, repressed it, controlled it, channeled it into her work. Projected it onto someone or something or anything else.

Now, she simply allowed it to be, and it burst through her hands onto canvas. With each dab of paint, with each finished work, she removed a piece of that darkness and expelled it.

If she had to, she would paint a thousand hells, one by one. And then a thousand more.

***

The first sixty paintings flowed out like torrents over a roaring cataract; the next twenty like a gushing stream. The eighty-first, however, had slowed to the spray of a fountain and remained unfinished, five months after she started it. She tried to reexamine the composition to correct whatever was wrong, but the solution eluded her. Finally, she gave up and painted over it completely in frustration.

The next morning, she picked up the brush to start from nothing again--when, unexpectedly, the door to the studio flung violently open. 

Startled, she stepped backward, away from the easel. Charles stood at the threshold, a taller, muscular man behind him, holding a gun at Charles’ side.

“I'm sorry,” said Charles, a trickle of blood seeping from a cut above his eyebrow. “I tried to stop them.”

The man jabbed Charles with the gun to force him aside. From behind them, Nikita emerged and entered the studio. She closed the door firmly, shutting Charles and the other man out.

Nikita had aged, but gracefully. Her hair was cut in a chin-length bob, making her cheekbones even more prominent. She wore a suit in muted colors; it was neither too expensive nor too cheap--the sort that allowed one to appear invisible in a crowd and yet somehow in authority. 

“Hello, Madeline.”

Madeline set down her brush and wiped her hands on her smock. “How nice of you to drop by,” she said, as coldly as she could muster.

“What a lovely space.” Nikita strolled along, glancing casually out windows and up at skylights.

Madeline said nothing.

“And these paintings,” Nikita added. “Incredible. They should be in a gallery.”

“I don't exactly like to call attention to myself.”

“Of course. A shame. You're very talented.”

Madeline gave an exasperated sigh. “This small talk is tedious. Get to the point, Nikita.”

“You can call me Operations.”

“I no longer work for your organization. I see no need to use titles.”

“Whatever you like.” Nikita smiled generously, having made her point anyway: she was not only still with Section; she was its leader.

“Well?” prompted Madeline, channeling her dread into bravado. “Let's get this over with. You didn't come all the way here personally just to chat.”

“Actually, that's exactly why I'm here. To talk.”

“About?”

“A number of questions you might be able to answer. You have a depth of experience that's lacking at Section today. There's no one left with your years of institutional knowledge.”

“No one,” Madeline repeated. The realization hung in her voice as she felt her stomach drop.

“No,” Nikita confirmed, but did not elaborate.

The urge to ask was overwhelming--to put to rest all her years of wondering and finally learn what had happened after her departure, no matter what terrible detail it might entail. But no, not from Nikita, of all people. Not from the person who once pronounced, _You two do not complement each other_ after observing only a fraction of their lives. To ask would acknowledge that the information mattered to her. To ask would signal that there was still a vulnerability Nikita could strike. Worst of all, to ask might even result in receiving an answer. As much as Madeline wanted one, she feared getting it just as much.

Madeline gestured to a stool for Nikita, and she pulled over another so they could sit facing each other--no glass windows to separate them this time, and no superiors from Center to interrupt. She folded her hands in her lap, waiting. 

“What do you know about Andrew Whitman?” Nikita asked.

“He was a recruit we rejected,” Madeline answered. “A few years before your time.”

“Why did you reject him?”

“He failed the psych screening.”

“And do you know what happened to him afterwards?

“Normally, we would have canceled him. However, Oversight intervened. It was felt he could be useful in one of the other Sections. He was transferred to Five, I believe.”

“What specifically did you find in the psych screening?”

“A range of disorders. I don't recall all the details.” Wondering where the line of questioning was going, she asked, “Why?”

Nikita took in a quick, tight breath. “He’s the new head of Oversight.”

“Is he?” Madeline sat back in surprise, and then the schadenfreude lifted the corners of her mouth. “Lucky you.”

“What can I use against him? His file is off limits to me now.”

At this, Madeline had to stifle a laugh. So, it was another war between Section One and Oversight. And another Operations needing her advice. She wasn’t sure if it was more humorous or outrageous that Nikita thought she would help.

However, as she tried to savor the moment--the moment of triumph, when Section finally came back to admit that it needed her, and when she could finally tell it _no_ \--the gratification didn’t come. Neither did the anger when she tried to reach for it. She looked around at the paintings encircling them: iceberg blue, sulphur yellow, oleander pink, obsidian black. The anger was there; it had breathed out from her lungs like fumes of nitric acid each time she’d faced her easel, and she could see the results displayed around the room in every possible direction. Yet now the feeling simply sat there on the walls--framed, static, two-dimensional, and inanimate.

Nikita watched her patiently.

Madeline took a deep breath and then picked up a nearby sketchpad and pencil. “I don’t remember everything. But I’ll fill in what I can. Give me a few moments.” 

She spent several minutes writing notes and even included a range of recommendations for the optimal strategy to undermine the man. Finished, she handed the notes to Nikita.

Nikita scanned the pages and then looked up with an appreciative nod. “Thank you. This is very helpful.”

“And now?”

“What do you mean?”

“I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. We're deserters; now you've found us. I know what comes next.”

Nikita shook her head. “We found you by accident, and I see no reason to make the discovery official. You might be useful to me again in the future.”

“So you're not….”

“No. It serves no purpose. Everything that happened between us was a long time ago.”

Nikita’s manner was crisp and professional. It was the same manner she had tried unconvincingly to adopt during Madeline’s review, but this time it was practiced and natural.

Madeline frowned, unable to suppress a prick of curiosity. “May I ask how you found us? It's been years.”

“That’s easy. You recently traveled through Barajas airport. We did a sweep there, looking for someone else, and we gathered fingerprints and DNA traces from thousands of people who’d passed through. The analyst doing the scan afterwards accidentally ran the search against all databases, instead of just active ones. Imagine my surprise when we got a match on deceased personnel. Or rather, two matches.”

“I see. We were careless to travel so openly. After all this time, we thought it was safe.”

“You weren’t wrong. If it hadn't been for the analyst's error, we never would have found you. Quite frankly, we weren't even looking.” A reflective expression softened Nikita’s face. “I'm glad you and Charles found each other, by the way. That was one of the things I regretted the most in my interactions with you. I should have done more to help.”

Was this a peace offering of sorts? A genuine expression of sympathy? A glimpse into Nikita’s inner self? To her surprise, Madeline found the woman sitting in front of her completely unreadable. Then again, back in Section, had she ever actually read Nikita correctly? She’d once been sublimely confident she could predict Nikita’s every waking thought with ease, and look where that had led.

She decided to give up looking for any deeper meaning; instead, she simply accepted Nikita’s statement at face value. “There’s nothing for you to regret,” she said. “You informed me of what was happening and gave me the opportunity to take care of it. That was the best thing you could have done under the circumstances. I’ll always be grateful for that.” 

She meant it sincerely, and for a moment, as they held each other’s gaze, the years dropped away. Not just the ones after Madeline’s escape, but all of the ones after Nikita’s recruitment as well.

“So what about you, Madeline?” Nikita said. Her voice no longer held the chilly inflection of the head of Section interviewing a source, but rather extended an invitation. “Any regrets to share?”

Any regrets? No. Or yes. In some ways, she had almost nothing but regrets. However, most of them weren’t really about Nikita, after all, so she’d keep them to herself.

“Is it really productive to rehash the past?” was all she could bring herself to say.

Nikita’s face subtly hardened, once again all business. “You’re right. It's not. Never mind.”

Nikita rose to her feet, and so Madeline did the same. Halfway toward the door, however, Nikita paused, indicating the paintings with a sweep of the hand.

“Self-portraits, right?”

Madeline nodded mutely. 

“They really do capture you,” Nikita said. “Except…”

“Except?”

Nikita looked Madeline up and down in appraisal. “You seem different now.” She turned to walk away again, but just at the door, one last painting caught her eye, and she stopped to scrutinize it up close. “Actually, this one looks a bit like me,” she remarked in a low voice, almost under her breath. 

A sudden emotion gripped Madeline’s chest, just as it had during her review all those years ago. This time, however, it wasn’t anger. “Nikita,” she said, “I'm so sorry.”

Nikita shook her head. “Don’t be. It's got nothing to do with you.”

***

When the door shut behind Nikita, Madeline closed her eyes and stood still for several moments. Then, with an urgency that ballooned into a compulsion, she roused herself into motion, circling the room to pull the paintings off the walls and toss them onto the floor. The first made a loud crack like a gunshot as its frame struck the tile. The second thumped, landing on the first. The third tore a hole in its canvas when it fell.

She was holding a three-by-three depiction of Tartarus in her hands, ready to launch it toward the rest, when Charles appeared, breathless. Seeing her, he exhaled loudly in relief.

“I didn't expect to find you alive in here,” he said.

She arched an eyebrow in bemusement. “Neither did I.”

“They got past our security. I should have done a better job setting it up.”

“There's nothing you could have done to stop them.”

“You're my wife. It's my duty to protect you.” 

He straightened his posture, feet planted firmly and shoulders pulled back like the proud ex-soldier that he was, but the expression in his face was ashamed. Standing under a skylight, he seemed fully in focus for the first time she could remember, a figure lit by the sun streaming in from overhead instead of blurred by shadows from a world that didn’t even exist anymore.

She walked over and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “You did.”

And he had, in fact, although she hadn’t realized it until now. Not from visitors like those today--she didn’t really need that kind of protection--but from something else entirely.

She dropped the painting of Tartarus onto the heap and returned to her task. After she removed all the paintings within arms’ reach, she began to use a stepstool to reach the others.

“You want to leave so they can't find us again?” he asked.

“No. That would be pointless. Now that they know we’re alive, they'll find us whenever they want.”

“Then what are you doing?”

She lobbed the Blue Lotus Hell Realm painting toward the top of the mound. It missed and skidded across the floor. “I'm going to burn them.”

His eyes widened. “But it's years of work.”

“I know,” she said, pitching another canvas onto the pile. It landed with a crash. “I'll paint something else.”

He watched her for another minute, and then he walked over to the paintings and lifted one up. He studied it for a long time. 

“I was right, wasn't I?” he asked. “These are Section.”

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “Yes, they are.”

She unhooked the final painting, carried the stacks out to the garden, and watched the flames consume them all.

**Author's Note:**

> Long ago, when the fandom was still active, I set a few challenges for myself, but I never got around to writing them. They were to see if I could (1) write post-S4 Madeline that *didn’t* involve her going back to Section or somehow being involved in the spy world in any way; (2) write a plausible Madeline/Charles relationship without Operations being around; and (3) write some kind of Nikita-Madeline reconciliation. They all started out as ideas for separate stories, but when I came across them as almost-forgotten-about notes recently, I decided that these ideas were not substantive enough to carry a story alone, but might work if combined. It was a fun piece to write and an enjoyable way to say goodbye to a fandom I enjoyed tremendously.


End file.
